Budget negotiators scale back University of Missouri cuts

(AP) — Budget negotiators from the Missouri House and Senate agreed to scale back proposed funding cuts to the University of Missouri and boost overall higher education funding as they settled the final pieces of the state's proposed spending plan Wednesday.

[...] a 4 percent increase would still be enough to hold down tuition, said Paul Wagner, executive director of the Council on Public Higher Education, which represents the presidents and chancellors of Missouri's 13 public, four-year universities.

University officials have faced criticism for how they handled the protests last year over administrators' perceived indifference to racism, which ended with resignations from the system president and the chancellor of the Columbia campus.

Many House lawmakers have said budget cuts are the only way to ensure the university does a better job of addressing student concerns, and the chamber voted against both parties' leadership to approve deeper cuts to the Columbia campus.